


Memories of Cooling Corpses

by bbcsherlockian



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, POV John Watson, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-08
Updated: 2013-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-31 21:36:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1036649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbcsherlockian/pseuds/bbcsherlockian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So you’re here, resting just under the surface, writhing in my veins and twisting between my organs. I’m still breathing so you’re still breathing, sitting there under my skin (and oh, how you itch)."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories of Cooling Corpses

There’s only one thing I regret from our short (oh, so very short) time together. I loved it, honestly. I loved waking up to find you sprawled sideways across our sofa, your feet hanging delicately off the end. I loved running away from serial killers with you almost as much as I loved running towards them, our hands brushing unobtrusively in the dark and our breath mingling in the cold air. I loved -

You somehow got under my skin. I trusted you, the broken soldier; “trust issues”, you said, but I trusted you implicitly from the moment I gave you my phone. I was yours and you were mine. And when you were here there were no ‘what-ifs’, there was nothing uncertain and there was nothing unsaid (nearly nothing, nearly but not quite). We just were, and we were fantastic.

But there were things, little things, (things you shouldn’t have done, things I should have said) that held us just centimeters apart. It wasn’t much but I could never get any closer, I couldn’t get close enough to touch your alabaster skin and seep myself into your bones (but you got into my skin, my cells, my dust). How strange it is that one syllable can be so disgusting and so very, very right. But I don’t think you’ll ever understand now how you could carve a hundred (a thousand, a million, infinite infinite infinite) faces into that goddamned wall and I’d photograph and catalogue every one. They’d leave more of you behind, more of your finalities and your physicalities so I could rub my fingertips across miles of scarred plaster and touch the memories where you once stood.

So you’re here, resting just under the surface, writhing in my veins and twisting between my organs. I’m still breathing so you’re still breathing, sitting there under my skin (and oh, how you itch). I can feel you more than ever, stinging and burning hot under my pores and it terrifies me (it’s as if you know, you can feel it, we’re nearing both our ends). Enveloped by this ridiculous chair, I can feel you pulsating and tugging me back. I’ll humour you (for now, give me time, give me time).

I’m sitting here, listening to the clock call out the seconds as they pass (it’s been ticking this whole time, have you heard it? it knows, it’s always known) and the stiller I become, the more restless you are in your urgency. Hypocrite. Remember when you timed how long it would take you to eat that stupid cake and how I was still finding icing in your hair days later? (it was a good day, you smiled. you smiled more back, back, back then) Remember when I nearly was shot and we sat on the roof while you smoked cigarette after cigarette after cigarette after - I tried it once, just to smell you but I choked and laughed as I imagined you would.

If I die, all your memories shatter (the shards and pieces will fall out of my skull and you will be nothing again) so I’ve held on (for you, my dear) and I’ll hold on still. The seconds have stretched into minutes now, and I can feel the years ahead grower closer and colder (and colder and colder); you’re still here, beneath my skin, but the thought of time still constricts my heart and wraps an icy hand around my neck (keep me breathing, fill my lungs let me inhale you). A life without you and a death without you (gone, why do you always have to be gone).

I burnt your dressing gown last week because it stopped smelling of you (months and months ago) and it seemed easier than washing it. I watched the flames devour the association and there was a distance and a chillingly vast nothingness that I have never experienced before (this is what the years will hold for me, cold and colder cold and).

You’re in my skin and you know, you know. I can’t hide it from you any longer.

I’m a doctor; I know how much doesn’t merit a stomach pump and I know to lock the door (i know, i know, ashes to ashes). You’re burning hotter than before and you feel like fire in my everything (i can’t stand it) so as I reach for them you reach for me and we’re both reaching, reaching but we’ll never touch because you’re buried under a chestnut tree while i’m stuck staring at that face on that wall and your straining hand doesn’t have the muscles that it used to so i can’t touch you anymore i can’t touch you anymore i can’t feel you anymore do you understand i can’t touch you because you died _you fucking died_ and left me here with scientific calculations scrawled in your handwriting and not much else this was never supposed to be how we would end this isn’t-

I can’t forgive you, but you’re underneath my skin so you know already. There’s not much point saying (anything, I shan’t say anything at all). If we were a fiction, a perfect and beautifully dellusioned fiction, we would age together, arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, me and you battling against nature itself. We would live until we’re eighty, watching years of sunrises until we saw our final sunset, and our dreams of long since gone years would draw smiles to our weathered faces as we breathed softly until we didn’t. None of it would matter, none of it would have made any difference but we would have had the greatest time.

This is not a fiction.

This. This is my note.

I think we always knew, buried deep in that blissfully ignored cavern of our minds, that I’d inevitably be the death of you, and you’d be the death of me. So here I am, fulfilling that fate. Death will be cold but empty years would have been colder, and I never said what I needed to say (love is a much more vicious motivator, sherlock. you of all people should know that).

I can’t

I can’t feel you under my skin anymore.


End file.
